Rand Paul wants the infamous '28 pages' of secret 9/11 files released

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill to call for the 28
classified pages of the 9-11 report to be
declassified.Andrew
Harnik

For more than a decade, a chunk of a high-level Congressional
report that allegedly shows ties between 9/11 terrorists and the
Saudi Arabian government has been classified.

Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing to make the
redacted section public.

On Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) joined a group of
bipartisan lawmakers promoting legislation that would release a
28 page report detailing foreign government connections to
terrorists who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"We cannot let page after page of blanked-out documents be
obscured by a veil, leaving these family members to wonder if
there is additional information surrounding these horrible acts,"
Paul said in a press conference on Tuesday,
according to the Washington Post.

The 28 pages are part of a larger Congressional report on 9/11
intelligence released in 2002 called the Joint Inquiry into
Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist
Attacks of September 11, 2001.

As the New Yorker notes,
the Bush administration decided to withhold parts, claiming the
contents would reveal intelligence gathering methods and make it
more difficult to find terrorists.

The redacted section has been closely held possibly because the
pages show how much the Saudi government knew about 9/11
hijackers. Whether the report shows a negligent government
that ignored the attacks, or a more proactive government that is
financially connected to the attackers is unclear.

The Saudi government was one of the Bush administration's closest
allies in the Middle East. Some lawmakers who have seen the
pages, including Rep. Walter Jones (R-North Carolina),
suggest the White House may have been hesitant to release the
pages because the administration would look bad for its ties with
the Saudis.

"There’s nothing in it about national security,” Jones told the
New Yorker. “It’s about the Bush Administration and its
relationship with the Saudis.”

It's unclear what actions the intelligence community took after
the report. As the Daily Beast
notes, the information in the report was passed on to the FBI
to investigate further in 2003, but it's unclear what the results
of the investigation were.

Along with Democratic co-sponsors Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon)
and Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-New York) in the
Senate, Paul's current allies in the House are also pushing
for release. Congressman Jones, who has been a vocal advocate for
the documents' release for years, is reaching out to House
lawmakers about supporting a resolution calling for the Obama
administration to release the information.

The White House is now considering whether it will release the
pages on its own. President Obama has previously said he supports
such a move.

"The administration, in response to a specific congressional
request, last year asked the intelligence community to conduct a
classification review of that material," White House spokesperson
Josh Earnest
said earlier this year.